


Latchkey

by gamerfic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ashes Scene in Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, Gen, POV Child, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 18:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30026097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/pseuds/gamerfic
Summary: "I can't change what happened here," Natasha said. Her voice was really serious, like Mom's got when she told Harper not to play in the street. "But I can promise you with everything I am that you willnotgo through it alone."
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Latchkey

"I'm going to go get Noah at the bus stop," Mom said. 

Harper didn't look up from her coloring book. "Okay." Mom always complained to Grandma on the phone about how Noah was in middle school now and he should be able to make it the two blocks home from the bus alone, but she still met him at the corner every time. Harper didn't get it. She liked doing things by herself, like staying home alone while Mom picked Noah up. She liked how the house got quiet when she left, then loud again when Noah got home. When Harper was in sixth grade she definitely wouldn't need Mom to walk her home like a kindergarten baby. 

The unicorn she was coloring in was really complicated. Her tummy was grumbling by the time she finished working on it. The light coming through the kitchen window was different now too, all long and golden. It had been a couple of hours since she got home from school and Mom gave her apple slices and cheese and crackers and milk. She hoped supper was soon. 

Mom had been gone for longer than usual. It happened sometimes. She'd stop to talk to the neighbor lady on the way back from the bus stop and lose track of time while Noah moped around her whining about how bored he was. When Mom got busy talking she could forget all about supper. Harper decided she had better go remind her. 

She put on her shoes, the sparkly ones with the flashing lights in the heels, and went out the front door. Spring was warm enough for her not to need a coat. She didn't see Mom or Noah anywhere, just the neighbor lady's little black dog Lucky running around in her yard. Lucky put his paws up on the fence and Harper held out her hand for him to sniff. While he was licking in between her fingers she turned toward the corner where the bus would pull up and saw something weird. A red light, blinking on and off, on and off. 

She continued down the street until she found where the light was coming from. The red bulbs on the top of the bus and around the stop sign arm were flashing to make the cars slow down and let kids cross the street. But no one was getting off the bus. In fact, it didn't look like anyone was inside it at all. The engine was rumbling loudly and the metal pipe in the back was burping out grey smoke, but the bus was just sitting there by the curb with no one driving it. 

Harper's stomach did a somersault. What were Mom and Noah doing? Were they hiding in the bus to play a trick on her? It had already been April Fool's Day but maybe that was part of the surprise, to do it on a day she wouldn't expect. 

The bus door was hanging open. She tiptoed up the steps and peered inside. "Mom? Noah?" The seats and the floor in the bus were really dirty, like someone had wiped off their muddy feet and let the mess dry. The sidewalk outside was dirty too. "Come out, come out, wherever you are." But no one answered. 

She walked up and down the aisle to see if they were hiding between the seats. She got ready for someone to jump up and scare her, but no one did. The only things inside were a bunch of tipped-over backpacks and notebooks on the floor and band instruments in their beat-up cases. Something about being there made her nervous, like she was snooping in a place she shouldn't have gone. She turned around and ran home, too afraid to look back over her shoulder. Maybe Mom and Noah would be waiting when she got there. 

But they weren't. Harper searched the whole house top to bottom. She even checked in all the closets and under the beds and in the creepy utility room she never went in because of all the spiderwebs in the corners. (She didn't see any spiders today.) Her tummy growled again as she climbed the stairs from the basement, louder this time and a little painful. The sun was going down. "Fine," she said to nobody. "I'll do it myself." 

She really wanted macaroni and cheese, but Mom said it wasn't safe for her to use the stove. Instead she dug out a big plastic bowl and dumped the noodles and the little paper packet of cheese powder into it, along with water from the sink. She pulled a chair over from the table so she could reach the microwave and put the bowl of noodles in for five minutes, which seemed right. What came out was all crunchy and gloppy, cold in some places and burned in others. So she scraped the whole thing into the garbage can and grabbed a bunch of other stuff from the cabinet that Mom would have said didn't make a meal, granola bars and fruit snacks and applesauce pouches, and ate those instead. Her tummy still felt funny when she finished, but it wasn't a hungry kind of funny anymore. It was more like the way it felt when adults laughed at something she said and she didn't get the joke. 

By now the sun had set the rest of the way. Harper was yawning, but she was afraid to go to sleep in her bedroom all by herself, even with her stuffed alligator and her rainbow night light. Mom was supposed to be there to tuck her in and read a chapter from one of her library books and sing Harper's special lullabye. Instead, she put her pajamas on and brushed her teeth and crawled into Mom's bed with her alligator under her arm. Mom kept saying Harper was getting too tall to fit in the bed with her, but right now Mom wasn't here to tell her no. 

Harper burrowed her body under Mom's green-and-blue quilt and buried her head in the pillow that still smelled like Mom's hair. Tears came to her eyes without warning. She sniffled and sobbed and blew her nose about a thousand times into about a thousand Kleenexes from the box on the bedside table, but no one comforted her. But she must have fallen asleep anyway, because the next thing she knew grey morning light was coming in through the window. 

At first she wondered if it had all been a dream, and if Mom would come in soon to wake her up for school while yelling at Noah to hurry up in the bathroom. It didn't happen. The house was so quiet without them. But even if Mom wasn't here, Harper decided she had better not skip school. Mom would get annoyed if she missed the bus, and maybe her teacher Mrs. Khan would know what was going on and be able to explain why everything felt so weird. She got dressed, ate a few handfuls of dry Cheerios, and put on her backpack and her purple rain slicker because it was a little drizzly outside. She even locked the door with the spare key Mom hid under a paint can in the garage. Mom would be proud of her for remembering. 

Harper and Noah used the same bus stop, but her bus arrived much earlier than his. She jogged so she wouldn't be late. As she went past the neighbor lady's house she heard a whimper from inside the yard and stopped. Lucky was huddled under a bush, shivering, his fur damp with rain. Had he been outside all night? That didn't seem safe. She didn't want to miss the bus, but she didn't want Lucky to get hurt, either. 

Standing on tiptoe, she reached over the neighbor lady's fence and fumbled around with the gate until she unlatched it. "Lucky, come!" she called as the gate swung open wide. Lucky didn't listen. He bolted through the opening and ran as fast as he could, back toward Harper's house. "Lucky, no, come back!" But he was long gone. She'd never catch up to him now. 

She hurried up the neighbor lady's front steps and rang the doorbell once, twice, then over and over a bunch of times the way Mom told her was really annoying to do. Nobody came to the door. She was going to miss the bus if she waited any longer. She stomped her foot in frustration and felt tears prickling at the corners of her eyes again. Then, with a sad look around the empty yard, she kept going toward the bus stop. She'd have to wait until after school to tell the neighbor lady what happened to Lucky. _Maybe Lucky will be lucky and come home on his own before then,_ she thought, and laughed a little at her own joke. 

There was a school bus at the corner when she got there, but not the bus to the elementary school. In fact, it was the same one that had been there the night before. The engine wasn't running anymore, and the lights weren't flashing, but it hadn't moved from its place by the curb. When Harper saw it, her stomach did another flip. Tingles ran up and down the back of her neck, like they did when she was trying to decide whether to trick-or-treat at the house with the scary skeleton decorations out front. "I feel sick," she said to whoever might be listening. "I have to stay home from school today." The excuse would have to be good enough. 

As she walked home she wondered if maybe she should call someone and ask them if they knew where Mom went. Grandma would definitely help her if she called, but Mom had taken her phone along with her to the bus stop and they didn't have another phone on the wall like the one at Grandma's house. Dad would know what to do, but he only came to see them on birthdays and Christmas and sometimes not even then. Maybe she should ask somebody from Mom's work? Mom's computer was on the table where she left it - she was always finishing up sending emails after Harper came home from school - but when Harper wiggled the mouse to wake it up, the screen stayed locked. She typed a few random things into the password field to see what might happen, but after a few tries it wouldn't even let her do that anymore. 

_I need to keep waiting for Mom,_ Harper thought. _She'll come back soon and help me._ The house was warm and safe and dry, with plenty of food and toys and books. She was old enough now to take care of herself. Mom wouldn't have let her stay home alone if she wasn't. So for now, she would prove she could do fine on her own. Wasn't that what a big kid would do? 

So she waited. It was really boring. She wanted to watch TV, but when she tried to go to Netflix the screen just said "No Connection." Instead she did puzzles, filled up the rest of her coloring book, made a whole city for her dolls at the top of the stairs in the spot where Mom never let her leave toys. She snooped around in Noah's room and played with all the action figures he always yelled at her not to touch. She didn't even put anything away before she went to sleep. When she got hungry, she ate whatever she found in the cupboards and the fruit in the bowl on the table. At night she slept in Mom's bed so she didn't get too scared. Each morning she took a red marker and crossed off a day on the calendar on the fridge, the way she'd seen people do in cartoons. But the cartoon characters did that because they were counting down to something, and Harper wasn't sure what she might be counting down to. 

On the day she made the fourth X on the calendar, the electricity went out. It didn't change too much about what she was doing, except she had to go to bed a little earlier because it got too dark in the house to keep playing. She found a flashlight in the hall closet and fell asleep hugging it next to her alligator. When she woke up the next morning, the batteries were dead and the lights were still out. She was thirsty, but she had drunk the last juice box the day before, and when she opened the fridge everything was all stinky and gross inside. "There's no two ways about it," Harper said with a sigh. She'd heard Mom say that before. "I have to go to the store." 

Mom's purse was in the front hall where she always left it. Inside it was her wallet, with a twenty-dollar bill. Harper knew she wasn't supposed to take other people's belongings, but the cabinets were starting to get empty now and she was _really_ hungry. She could pay Mom back later out of her allowance. She folded the money into the pocket of her jeans and left the house again, making sure to lock the door behind her. 

Mr. Mohamed's convenience store was seven blocks away, the same number as the big candle on Harper's cake last month. She and Mom and Noah walked there all the time to get ice cream when the weather was nice. Sometimes Mom even sent Noah there alone on his bike to pick up something she forgot for whatever she was cooking. If Noah could go shopping by himself, Harper could do it too. She took a couple of wrong turns once she got past the bus stop (The school bus was still sitting there! How funny!), but soon she found the right street and saw the store on the corner in front of her. The little bell on the door jingled as she pushed it open. 

The lights were off in Mr. Mohamed's store too, and he wasn't behind the counter like normal. He always gave Harper a lollipop when he saw her come in (and Noah too, even when Noah pretended like he didn't want one), even if Mom was already buying her a bunch of candy. She'd eat it while he tallied up the items, and play with the parakeet in its cage by the cash register, and tap on the burbling fish tank in the window. Now there wasn't anything in the birdcage except a little pile of dust at the bottom. The water in the fish tank was all brown and cloudy, and some of the fish were floating belly-up on top of it. She looked away. 

The first place Harper went was the ice cream freezer, of course, but all the ice cream was too melted to eat. She grabbed a plastic basket by the door and filled it up with all the snacks she was running out of at home. Then she brought everything up to the counter and used Mr. Mohamed's calculator to add up the numbers on the little orange tags, just like he did. It took a long time, but she figured it out because she was good at math. The total was more than twenty dollars, but she was pretty sure Mr. Mohamed would understand. She ripped off a sheet of paper from the little pad of receipts by the register and carefully wrote: 

_Dear Mr. Mohamed, IOU $4.59. Yours truly, Harper_

She put all the food in a plastic bag and started home. This time she knew the way to go. She was about halfway there, walking down a street she hadn't been on before, when a noise made her stop. It sounded like someone crying very softly, coming from an open window in one of the houses nearby. "Hello?" Harper called. "Who's there?" 

Something moved in the window. Harper stepped closer. Now she could see another little girl peeking out from between the curtains. Her nose was runny and her brown eyes were very red. "Is your mom or dad with you?" she asked in a weak voice. 

"I'm waiting for my mom to come back from the bus stop." 

"If she didn't come back then she's _dead_." 

"How do you know?" 

"Because." The other girl drew in a deep, shuddering breath. "I stayed home from school because I had the throw-ups. My mommy and daddy had them too. We were all on the couch together watching Moana - " 

"Oh, that one's my favorite!" Harper interrupted. 

The other girl kept talking like she hadn't heard her. " - And then they both turned into _ashes and dust._ And I had to throw up and _nobody_ held my hair." 

Harper didn't know what to say. The other girl's story sounded like a bad dream, or something somebody made up. "My name's Harper. What's yours?" 

"Swathi." 

"Do you want to come outside and play?" Harper wasn't sure why she suggested it. She didn't even know this girl. But it had been a _really_ long time since she saw anybody else, and it was starting to seem like a good idea to try to make some friends. 

Swathi shook her head. "Daddy said not to open the door for strangers. And besides, I'm sick." 

Now that Swathi mentioned it, she did look kind of pale and tired. Her straight black hair was tangled around her face, like no one had brushed it for a while. "Do you have any medicine?" 

"I ran out." 

Harper thought of the wire racks of Tylenol and Pepto-Bismol lined up neatly inside Mr. Mohamed's store. Even though she was out of money, she could add more to the IOU. "I know where to get you medicine." 

"Really?" 

"Yeah." She rummaged around in her grocery bag and found a juice box and a packet of crackers. Ginger ale and saltines always made upset tummies feel better. She set the food down in the grass under the window. "I left you a snack. When I leave, you can come outside and get it. I'll come back with medicine soon." 

"Okay," said Swathi, and smiled. 

Harper felt proud as she headed for the store. Not only could she take care of herself, she could take care of other people too! Just like Mom would have done. Something twisted inside her at the thought, and for a moment she wondered if she was going to throw up too. She swallowed hard and moved on. 

She was only a block away from Swathi's house when she heard another new noise from behind her. A black car was driving up the street, the first one she had seen today. The road she was on was usually busy with traffic, too busy for Mom to let her cross it alone. Was that weird? 

The car pulled up right next to her and stopped. She kind of wanted to run away, but she kind of wanted to see who was inside it too. The window rolled down and a little black dog stuck its head out and barked. "Lucky!" Harper cried. 

"Is this your dog?" the blonde lady driving the car asked. Her face had scratches and bruises on it and there were dark circles under her eyes. 

Harper looked down at her scuffed-up sneakers. "No. He's my neighbor's." 

"Is your neighbor home?" 

"No." 

The lady's voice got softer. "What about your mother? Or your father?" 

"Mom went to get my brother at the bus stop. She'll be back soon. I know it." 

"You mean over there?" the lady asked, pointing toward Harper's house. Harper nodded. 

The lady shut the car off and got out. Lucky jumped out behind her. She walked around to the side of the road and knelt down by the curb. Harper's eyes got wide when she saw that the lady had a gun on her belt, like a cop or a soldier. "What's your name, sweetie?" 

"Harper." 

"I'm Natasha. Harper, I'm going to try to find out what happened to your mother and brother, but it might take me a while. If you don't have an adult at home with you right now, I think it would be best if you came with me." 

Harper hesitated. Mom would have told her not to go anywhere with a stranger, but Mom had been gone for a _really_ long time now. She dragged her toe in the dirt. "But my friend…" 

"What about your friend?" 

"She's sick and I need to get medicine for her. Her mom and dad went away too." 

Natasha made a face. It reminded Harper of how Mom looked when something in a movie made her sad and she was trying not to cry about it. "Where is your friend now?" 

Harper gestured in the direction of Swathi's house. "Over there." 

Natasha opened the back door of the car. "Get in." Everyone had told Harper _never_ to do this with a stranger, but the way Natasha said it made her think she should listen. It was the same voice Mom used when she told Harper to clean her room, times like a million. So Harper got in. Lucky scrambled up into the seat and got into her lap. She'd never ridden in a car without her booster seat before, and Natasha drove so fast to Swathi's house that Harper kept tipping and sliding all over. She held tight to Lucky and hoped Natasha didn't get in an accident. 

Swathi was sitting on her front steps sipping her juice box when the car stopped in front of her house. Natasha got out to talk to her. Harper couldn't hear what Natasha said, but it must have made sense because pretty soon Swathi got in the backseat next to Harper. She was wearing My Little Pony pajamas with a throw-up stain on the front of them, which was gross, but Harper didn't tell her so. "Hi," said Harper, and Swathi just nodded. 

They rode in the car for a long time with Lucky curled up between them on the seat. Harper offered Swathi some more of the snacks from the bag, but Swathi clutched her stomach and shook her head. Nobody talked. Harper drank another juice box and ate part of a Snickers bar. Natasha was driving slower now, which was good, plus she made everyone put their seatbelts on. She often peeked at Harper and Swathi in the mirror like she was trying to make sure they were still there. Grownups were so silly sometimes. 

Natasha drove onto the big highway, the one that went to the mall and gymnastics class and Grandma's house. Usually there were a lot of cars there, enough to make the traffic stop and go and sometimes to make Mom say a swear word. Today it was almost empty. Most of the other cars she saw were stuck in the ditch, or stopped in the middle of the road so Natasha had to drive around them. There was a long line of army guys going the other way, in jeeps and enormous green trucks and even a tank. Noah would have thought it was really cool, and Harper turned to point it out to him before she remembered he wasn't there. 

The whole time, Natasha kept talking. At first Harper thought she was talking to herself, until she saw the little white headphone in her ear and realized she was actually on the phone. She couldn't hear everything over the whoosh of the highway, just bits and pieces. "...subdivision near the Avengers facility...abnormally high proportion of casualties...unaccompanied minors...dehydration…" Once Natasha got really quiet for a while, and Harper could sort of hear the person on the other end of the call yelling at her. Then Natasha said, in Mom's stop-arguing-because-I-made-up-my-mind voice, "Rhodey, I can goddamn guarantee you there is no _possible_ better use of my time right now." 

Finally they parked in front of a hotel and went inside. The lobby was full of people in uniforms rushing around and shouting at each other. It was louder and more crowded than anyplace Harper had been in a long time, and she clapped her hands over her ears to muffle the sound. She saw a swimming pool through a wall of windows across the room, and got excited until she remembered she didn't have her swimsuit. Maybe later Natasha could go back to her house and get it for her. 

A lady in a white doctor coat led Swathi away, but Natasha stayed with Harper and Lucky. They rode in an elevator up to a hotel room, with two big soft beds and a painting of some mountains on the wall. The lights worked, and so did the TV. Natasha handed her a towel and told her to get clean, so she did. At home Mom would have helped her wash her hair, and the little bottle of shampoo was hard to squeeze, but Harper figured it out. 

When she got out of the shower there was a clean pair of pajamas folded up on the counter by the sink. Harper didn't know where they had come from, but she put them on anyway. Natasha was sitting at the desk in the room with Lucky at her feet. "Feel better?" 

Harper nodded. "Shouldn't Lucky have a bath too?" His little paws were leaving dirty prints all over the light blue carpet. 

Natasha looked like she was trying to come up with a reason to say no, but then she just said, "Fine." They put Lucky in the tub and used up the rest of the shampoo washing dried mud out of his fur. Toward the end of the bath he jumped up and put his wet feet on Natasha's chest and splashed dirty water all down the front of her shirt. At first she let out an angry huff, but then when Harper laughed, Natasha laughed too. 

While they were drying Lucky off, Harper asked Natasha, "Am I going to stay here until my mom can come and get me?" 

Natasha's hands stopped moving in Lucky's fur. She looked Harper right in the eye. "Harper," she said, "I don't think your mom is coming back." 

It took Harper a second to understand what Natasha meant. As soon as she did, the tears came. She sobbed and sobbed until it felt like she couldn't breathe. She fell against Natasha's chest and wept into her shoulder, even though Natasha's wet shirt was making her new pajamas all dirty. "I want to go home," she hiccuped. "I don't want to be all alone." The "o" in "alone" dragged out into a long shaky wail. She hated how she sounded like a baby, but she couldn't help it. She just wanted everything to be normal again. She just wanted Mom. 

Eventually the tears stopped coming. Harper still felt sadder than she'd ever been, but it was like there was no more crying left to come out of her no matter how bad she felt. Natasha was hugging her and rubbing her back in little circles. Harper sat up and wiped her nose on her sleeve. Lucky sat next to her with his head tilted to the side and his ears drooping. 

"I can't change what happened here," Natasha said. Her voice was really serious, like Mom's got when she told Harper not to play in the street. "But I can promise you with everything I am that you will _not_ go through it alone." 

Natasha seemed like she was going to say something else, but before she could there was a knock at the door. She went to answer it with her hand on her gun. When she came back she was holding a pizza box in one hand, and Swathi's hand in the other. The pizza smelled amazing, but Harper forgot all about it when she saw Swathi. "Swathi! You're okay!" she shouted, and hugged the other girl. 

Swathi had new pajamas and wet hair too. She pulled up her sleeve and showed Harper a little piece of gauze taped to the inside of her elbow. "The doctor had to stick a _needle_ in me," Swathi said. "But she said I'm going to be fine now." She was definitely less pale now, at least. 

"The doctor also thinks you should both eat something," Natasha said. She opened the box - plain cheese, Harper's favorite, how did she know? - and started laying out pieces of pizza on napkins. Harper ate three whole slices and part of another one before she got too full to eat more. She gave the leftover crust to Lucky. It was the best pizza she had ever tasted. 

"Okay," said Natasha after she cleared the leftovers away. "Time to go to sleep." 

"But I don't have my alligator," Harper said. 

"I don't have my elephant," Swathi said. "What if we shared a bed?" 

"Okay." 

So Harper and Swathi snuggled in together under the heavy white hotel comforter. Lucky curled up at the foot of the bed between them. Swathi had been rubbing her eyes while they ate, and she fell asleep right away. Harper was tired too, but even though she squeezed her eyelids shut as tight as she could, she still felt all awake and jittery. She lifted her head and saw that Natasha was there in the room, sitting in the armchair across from the bed. A computer rested in her lap, the screen lighting up her face in the dark, her fingers tap-tap-tapping away across the keyboard. Just like Harper's mom, when she had a deadline at her job. Natasha wasn't even looking at Harper, but something about her being there made Harper feel protected. Safe. Like no matter what was happening outside of the hotel room, here and now nothing would harm her. 

Harper yawned. Her head felt really heavy all of a sudden. She let it drop down onto the pillow and felt sleep covering her like a warm blanket. Natasha was right. A lot of things were never going to be the same again, or even okay again. She didn't know what she was going to do next. But she knew as much as she had ever known anything that she was never, ever going to have to do it alone. 

**Author's Note:**

> To say that I was not expecting to write this when I sat down with the intention of working on an MCU fic project would be a massive understatement. It apparently had to come out, so I hope you enjoyed it. I'm fascinated by what the Snap must have been like for ordinary people in the MCU, and it might turn out I have more stories like this one in me. If I do, I'll add them all to a series.


End file.
